Ifill Jokes That Palin ‘Blew Me Off’ During Debate

PBS’s Gwen Ifill, moderator of last week’s vice presidential debate between Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), says Palin blew her off during the debate by disregarding questions.

When NBC’s Tom Brokaw suggested to Ifill, on yesterday’s “Meet the Press,” that Palin had “completely ignored” a question by saying she wanted to speak directly to the American people,

Ifill said there is “little a moderator can do” to get debaters to answer questions directly, acknowledging that debaters have their own objectives and a moderator’s job may not be to steer the debate too heavily.

“One of the interesting things about debates that people forget…is that there are two people on the stage, and their job…are to debate each other,” Ifill said. “The moderator’s job is to control their debate. If they have decided, as Joe Biden decided, that he was going to debate John McCain, and she decided she was going to give a stump speech to the American people, there’s very little a moderator can do other than say ‘no no no, listen, I asked a question, please please answer.’ So I knew, going in, that they all had their goals for that debate.”